Medivac drops too powerful vs toss?

I know there's a lot of kids on TL.net that can't handle balance discussions, so please - if you are one of those, please leave. I want to discuss Medivacs and their usage early on, and how to counter it properly.

This is high diamond/early master league.

My problem: Toss has few units, and they need to be gathered in 1 spot, when the terran hits with his MMM ball early/mid game - you can't just place 4 stalkers in the mineral line, without knowledge of where the opponent army is - in case he hits elsewhere.

So, I spot 3 medivacs soon dropping in my main and my expo, so I move half my army to protect the main and leave the rest at the expo. Which units should I send? Zealot, stalkers and immortals are either too fragile or too slow alone and are immediately kited and killed off by marauders/marines.

Which units do you send vs. a drop, and how do you prepare as you see a drop coming in? You have literally seconds until they drop in your mineral line.

TG Sambo... Intel classic! Life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery

Well for me it depends on the type of drop, if its pure marines send stalkers, pure marauder send zealots and 1/2 stalkers etc. Or if you feel theres an attack coming at the same time (just lost control of xel naga) try to warp in units there instead so you dont lose troops from your main force (and protoss has the defenders advantage a little bit due to rally points.

On February 05 2011 13:02 Qzy wrote:Toss has few units, and they need to be gathered in 1 spot

No. And work on scouting.

No? Why no? If you don't have your units in 1 spot, and he doesn't drop, you are dead. Nevermind banned the troll.

You also have to read his second sentence. Its not like it was a long post.

If you scout, there's a chance you can find his drops coming (though thats not always possible). But one thing you can do is scout for his entire army coming after you. Then you can regroup. Yeah he can still drop you while he attacks but you're just gonna have to deal with it.

On February 05 2011 13:02 Qzy wrote:Toss has few units, and they need to be gathered in 1 spot

No. And work on scouting.

No? Why no? If you don't have your units in 1 spot, and he doesn't drop, you are dead. Nevermind banned the troll.

Actually he is right. if you scout correctly, you will either notice the drop coming with an observer (they should be out if you have made a robo bay) or just have map awareness in your base and when you see the little dot, pull your probes and send the army, you should have pylons placed around the edge of your base to scout for drops like this if you are high diamond/master league toss... I mean.. cmon.

For the early game w/ Hellion drops it is exactly like vulture drops on bw except these ones have splash. Think of it like that if you played bw and the timing becomes easy.

If you're worried about marauder/rine drops just have obs keeping an eye out for his medivacs and react when you see them. You can safely keep up in macro as well as have good map control by making obs vs T while teching to collo or ht's. Keep watch on his nat's choke w/ an extra ob if you are really nervous about not seeing him push until it is too late.

I agree drops are strong but only if you hesitate to send units to stop them. keep in mind if you go ht's and see a drop coming, it is often the case and you can feedback it and either leave it in red hp or kill it completely before it starts to drop units.

You have observers, hallucination, probes and Xel naga watch towers. I don't see your point. In fact, I think it's ignorant.. You obviously are not good enough yet. You need to go back and work on your game, specifically scouting. Learn what you should be scouting and you'll do fine. If you want to counter the units, it's about positioning and warp in. If you have an obs in specific locations you will know where he is going with his dropships. Alternatively speaking you could go collo/phoenix. Think about it.. how the fuck can Terran drop if you have a mass of phoenix. They simply can't unless they are hidden dropships, if you have great scouting then I don't see the problem.

Improve on your game, you're not good enough yet. This should give you something to work towards. Achieve greatness!

On February 05 2011 13:31 Kyhol wrote:You have observers, hallucination, probes and Xel naga watch towers. I don't see your point. In fact, I think it's ignorant.. You obviously are not good enough yet. You need to go back and work on your game, specifically scouting. Learn what you should be scouting and you'll do fine. If you want to counter the units, it's about positioning and warp in. If you have an obs in specific locations you will know where he is going with his dropships. Alternatively speaking you could go collo/phoenix. Think about it.. how the fuck can Terran drop if you have a mass of phoenix. They simply can't unless they are hidden dropships, if you have great scouting then I don't see the problem.

Improve on your game, you're not good enough yet. This should give you something to work towards. Achieve greatness!

Yep, this.

Congrats on banning the dude that gave you simple, yet effective, advice.

If you watch Godzilla backwards it's about a benevolent lizard who helps rebuild a city and then moonwalks into the ocean.

If I'm 50% apm over my opponent, ergo not slow, how can it not be considered "powerful" in the way it takes a lot of skill to counter it properly.

You see, it's not the scouting problem I've presented to you, it's the composition of units to counter it. You'll need stalkers when out of position and not able to forcefield, and stalkers are very fragile in tight corners where zealots can't be in front.

You guys are waaaaay too defensive and/or insulting.

TG Sambo... Intel classic! Life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery

If I'm 50% apm over my opponent, ergo not slow, how can it not be considered "powerful" in the way it takes a lot of skill to counter it properly.

You see, it's not the scouting problem I've presented to you, it's the composition of units to counter it. You'll need stalkers when out of position and not able to forcefield, and stalkers are very fragile in tight corners where zealots can't be in front.

You guys are waaaaay too defensive and/or insulting.

Scout what buildings they have!I'm a tad bit confused about how this is THAT difficult.Sure, drops are annoying. Not too strong.

If I'm 50% apm over my opponent, ergo not slow, how can it not be considered "powerful" in the way it takes a lot of skill to counter it properly.

You see, it's not the scouting problem I've presented to you, it's the composition of units to counter it. You'll need stalkers when out of position and not able to forcefield, and stalkers are very fragile in tight corners where zealots can't be in front.

You guys are waaaaay too defensive and/or insulting.

Scout what buildings they have!I'm a tad bit confused about how this is THAT difficult.Sure, drops are annoying. Not too strong.

I can easily see a drop coming, and see that he's going for a 1-1-1 build. But when he drops in your main and natural, you'll have to split up the army - you can't forcefield in open spaces with few sentries (only 2-3 forcefields) and you'll get kited with zealots/immortals. Stalkers are too fragile.

It might be a too hard topic for TL (thinking about flames towards idra/artosis when doing IMBALANCE) and something I should save for my practice partners.

TG Sambo... Intel classic! Life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery

Why are you putting down everyone who is telling you that you should refine your play? This isn't a problem with the game, it's a problem with your play. If it was inherently imbalanced, this "problem" of yours would have been prevalent long before now.

Protoss players can do a lot of different things to deal with drops. If you go HT tech, you can feedback medivacs, making 1-2 stalkers VERY effective in warding them off. If you go robo tech you can spot when a drop is leaving the Terran base, or when it is coming in. You can scout the starpot, medivac, the units, so forth.

If you go stargate tech, you can use phoenixes and/or voidrays to intercept the medivac or help you clean up the drop. Phoenixes are arguably the best scouting unit in the game.

If you chose to simply go warpgate tech, or DTs, or something, you can use blink stalkers. You should have more gateway units if you chose to skip a tech option, so your "too few units to deal with a drop" situation doesn't even occur.

If I'm 50% apm over my opponent, ergo not slow, how can it not be considered "powerful" in the way it takes a lot of skill to counter it properly.

You see, it's not the scouting problem I've presented to you, it's the composition of units to counter it. You'll need stalkers when out of position and not able to forcefield, and stalkers are very fragile in tight corners where zealots can't be in front.

You guys are waaaaay too defensive and/or insulting.

People are reacting the way they are because you framed this as a balance discussion despite not being anywhere near a top player. You could have titled this "[H] Medivac drops PvT" if you wanted advice on how to stop them.